Human Rights Glance
The U.N. human rights office Tuesday expressed concerns about possible “ethnic cleansing,” denouncing an acceleration of Israeli settlements and displacements of thousands of Palestinians in large parts of the occupied West Bank that has grown “more relentless” in recent months.
A new report from the office of Volker Türk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, covers a yearlong period through the end of October and warns of expanded settlements in large parts of the West Bank and the forced displacement of more than 36,000 Palestinians.
Since then, “the pace of the concerted efforts by the Israeli government to seize as much Palestinian land as possible — with as few Palestinians in it as possible — is only becoming more relentless,” Ajith Sunghay, the head of the rights office in occupied Palestinian areas, told a U.N. briefing in Geneva.
The Israeli diplomatic mission in Geneva responded by saying that as far as Israel was concerned, the U.N. rights office “has lost all credibility.” It alluded to longtime allegations — backed often by the United States — of unfair bias against Israel and a relative disregard of other human rights situations around the world.
“It does not function as an impartial and neutral human rights office, but as the epicenter of vile anti-Israel activism,” the mission said in a statement, blasting a “U.N. anti-Israel narrative machine” that has produced several reports about Israeli settlements in recent months.
Families arrive at the cemetery after sunset. They come carrying rugs and cushions, food and water, and candles or lanterns that they place on the small, freshly dug graves. Parents carefully clean the tombstones of their buried children. They arrange the spaces around them and settle in for the night—a quiet vigil that will continue until dawn.
A New York high school student who was detained at an immigration courthouse in May last year, sparking national outrage, was released on Wednesday.
After spending two consecutive Ramadans behind bars, Leqaa Kordia was freed from US immigration detention on Monday, in what her lawyers have described as a "staggering" $100,000 bond.
Israel is set to keep Al-Aqsa Mosque closed through the upcoming Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr and beyond, Middle East Eye has learnt.
Israeli soldiers fired on a car carrying a family in the northern West Bank, killing four people including two children, the Palestinian Authority's Health Ministry said.
srael has killed three Palestinians and wounded five others, including a child, in separate attacks targeting areas in eastern Gaza City and the northern Gaza, according to medical sources.
